Birdwatch survival for kings of the river

Kingfishers facing tough feeding conditions due to the floods that have hit Northern England.

Published:16:00Tuesday 26 January 2016

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Flooding has not only disrupted the lives of many humans but also the birds that live along rivers and streams.

Kingfishers have found it very difficult to find food in swollen rivers and streams with the water clouded by sediment.

They normally hunt from low perches or by hovering above the water taking small fish from close to the surface.

This will have been all but impossible for many days recently and, as a kingfisher needs to catch at least its own body weight in fish each day to survive, it seems likely that some will have starved to death.

Recent research has found some kingfishers will adapt their behaviour during time of flood and swim down to the river bed to take prey instead of picking off fish close to the surface, but even this strategy would seem impossible in the recent conditions.

A pair of kingfishers can produce two or three large broods a year but in autumn chase off the youngsters and divide the breeding territory among them.

Many of these young birds have had no chance to learn to fish before having to fend for themselves so in most years more than half die during periods when rivers and ponds are iced over or flooded.

Other members of the heron family will have struggled to survive in flooded marshes. The emaciated body of a bittern was found in the flood debris at Swillington Ings in Leeds which had obviously found it difficult to find enough food.

Another bird that will have found life difficult is the dipper. They normally feed on the bottoms of rivers and streams, diving down and walking among the stones to take the larvae of caddis flies.

The waters have been flowing so fast that they must have found it impossible to do this and much of their food will have been swept away.

Some birds have found the floods to their liking.

Waders such as snipe, lapwings and golden plovers have had huge areas of soft mud to probe and have been patrolling around the edges of the floodwater picking up insects and worms.